Since we're all super-duper smarty pants here, I thought it might be fun to start a puzzle "tag" thread. Similar to the movie quote and lyric quote "tag" threads, one person submits a puzzle, and whoever solves it gets to present their own puzzle. I only plan on submitting puzzles that can be explained via text, but if someone really wanted to put an image in their post I think it's okay.

Of course, just like the other "tag" games don't look up the answer anywhere, including asking someone else the answer. If you want a friend of yours to help you puzzle it out that's fine but let's try to keep some semblance of fairness here. Of course this will be on the Honor System but we all seem to be pretty honorable folks here.

Some special rules for this game:

1. If you don't know the answer right away, make posts asking questions for clarification if necessary. Also, some puzzles (like the one I will start with) are almost built to be solved by asking Yes or No questions, so please do so to help yourself solve it.

2. If you do know the answer right away, go ahead and post it. Except...

3. If you have heard the answer before please wait 24 hours before posting it. Part of the fun of this will be solving a new puzzle for yourself, we don't want all the puzzles to be spoiled right away for everyone. If no one seems to be able to solve it (or even get close) then go ahead and answer. Exceptions might be made for really old puzzles that everyone knows, but in that case I'd rather see posts like "I know this one, everyone does, can I please say the answer?" to establish your place, and then we'll see if everyone agrees.

4. NEW RULE 1/1/04: The puzzle should be able to be solved by an average member of this board. So please, no puzzles whose solutions require you to write a program or solve some extremely obscure mathematical equation. Those aren't puzzles anymore, they are problems. We can't stop you from writing a program to solve a "normal" puzzle (although the spirit of the game is to solve the puzzles by hand), but I will have to now prohibit puzzles that require a programming solution or knowledge that is too esoteric or requires a lot of education in a particular field to solve.

5. NEW RULE 1/11/04: You must know the solution to the puzzle you are posting. It's a waste of everyone's time if you don't know what the right answer is to the puzzle you post.

6. NEW RULE 1/13/04: If you don't have a new puzzle ready when you answer correctly, or you can't post one in a reasonable amount of time, then please refrain from answering. A reasonable amount of time should be at most 1 day. I would rather see the topic be empty because no one knows the answer than because there is no new puzzle.

Okay, I think that's it, if any more rules are necessary I will add them later. Here's my first puzzle to start it off.

A man is found dead in a room with 53 bicycles scattered around him. How and why did he die?

As I said before, this is a puzzle that is meant to be solved by asking Yes or No questions, so please ask to help you solve it!

Game on,

[Edited by Oneiromancer on 01-01-2004 at 12:10 AM GMT: Rule #4]

[Edited by Oneiromancer on 01-11-2004 at 08:55 PM GMT: Rule #5]

[Edited by Oneiromancer on 01-14-2004 at 07:54 AM GMT: Rule #6]

[Edited by Oneiromancer on 04-14-2004 at 10:07 PM GMT: Added tagline]

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"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

quote:ErikH2000 wrote:
Are the bicycles ordinary bicycles with two wheels?

No, they are not "ordinary bicycles". I will refrain from answering the second part because I don't want to be unnecessarily anal.

Game on,

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

quote:ErikH2000 wrote:
Are the bicycles made of a material other than metal?

Yes, the bicycles are not metal.

Game on,

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

A guy was playing cards (bicycles) for money with some serious characters. They discovered he was cheating (53 cards is one too many) and killed him.

Yep, that's it. For those who might be confused, Bicycle cardsare one of the most popular brands of playing cards, although this might only be in the U.S. And as you can see from the top middle picture in that link, there are indeed wheels on the backs of the cards, which is why I was being evasive when answering one of Erik's questions.

Allright, puzzle please!

Game on,

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

quote:NoahT wrote:
Is the color of the bear determined by the trip the man takes from his house?

Hmm. This isn't the same sort of ask-questions puzzle as Oneiromancer's. I will be glad to clarify anything, but I don't want to give out too many hints. Let's just say that there are no red herrings for this one--the information given is all relevant.

-Erik

____________________________Godkiller Gamedev Sundays (live sessions every Sunday 3pm PST where I make a new puzzle game)youtube (archive of live streams, and some animated videos I made)

If you've heard it before, courtesy suggests that you wait, but if you have never heard it before and just figured it out then please go right ahead.

I've heard the first part before a bunch of times but never seen it related to the second part...it does make it a nicer puzzle though.

Game on,

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

It's one I remember hearing before, and then I thought it through just now and figured it out. To give others a chance though, here's the wrong solution:

Since it's given in Miles he's clearly an American. However, there are very few bears located within a mile of a random house in North America, so it probably wasn't a bear at all. The only person in North America who could possibly mistake some random animal for a bear is George W. Bush, so the bear was orange, the colour of a tabby cat.

quote:DiMono wrote:
It's one I remember hearing before, and then I thought it through just now and figured it out. To give others a chance though, here's the wrong solution:

Well, okay, if you've heard it before but didn't figure it out until now (for example, perhaps another post here gave you a clue) then it's okay to post the answer. I bet there are even some puzzles that I once knew, and I hear them again, and I sit down and figure it out, and after illumination comes I realize that I remember getting that answer before. Since I still had to do some hard work to figure it out I would feel justified in claiming the answer.

Game on,

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

The bear was white. The man needs to live in a place where he can move laterally and still be the same distance from his home. The only places he could do this are the north and south poles, where he'd always be the same distance from home in the same direction no matter how far east or west he went. In this case, the north pole, so we're talking about Santa! Yay!

Alright, my turn...

A man is found dead in his living room. Next to him is a stick. How did he die?

All those are great guesses (well, except for the popsicle and vampire ones), and if none of them are right, I want to follow up on Schik's question by asking if, specifically, any of the windows in the living room are broken.

Game on,

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

I just thought I would say that I hate these lateral thinking puzzles. I prefer logic puzzles where you can actually figure out the answer given the clues without needing to guess or ask yes no questions.

"Lateral thinking", that's a good way to put it. I would say that Erik's puzzle wasn't quite lateral, but it depends on your worldly points of view. The first part of it was basically strictly mathematical/physical: where is the one place on Earth where you can walk 1 mile South, 1 mile West, and 1 mile North and end up where you started? When you put it in different language it can become more difficult of course.

...and now I see you added a guess anyway. If you get it right give us a logic puzzle instead, variety is good!

Game on,

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams